Send Skeletal Delegates to UNGA – Ntata

By:Trifonia Chigoma

Malawi government has been urged to send a delegation of not more than 10 people to this year’s United Nations General Assembly in New York in September.

In a letter that has been signed by Reform to Transform co-coordinators Z Allan Ntata and Chikumbutso Mtumodzi which The Malawi star has seen is addressed to The United Nations resident co-coordinator, Mia Seppo copied to other international agencies , embassies , Public Affairs Committee, chairperson of Congoma,  Ministry of foreign affairs and international cooperation,  World Bank chief of party. It is calling on the president Peter Mutharika to consider not going to this year’s assembly to save the much-needed resources for equally important developmental activities in the country.

The two argued that in 2015 the president traveled with a bloated delegation without any proper explanations. This year Malawians are hit by severe hunger which they say has been caused by imprudent , outdated and ill-advised economic and agricultural planning that has resulted in severe food shortages.

“As concerned Malawians, we are informed that the unrepentant Malawi government is even now already making larger than life plans for the next United Nations General Assembly to take place again in New York in September. To the best of our knowledge and based on our collective experience of this and similar events after conducting a sober cost-benefit analysis of previous expenditures on UNGA delegations versus the benefit realised by the average Malawian from these voyages, a delegation of not more than 10 members is what Malawi under a wise leader should besending to the  UNGA.

Anything more is an abuse of office and misuse of public resources regardless of where those resources are coming from,”reads part of the letter signed by the two former President Bingu Wa Mutharika aides.

According to Ntata and Chikumbutso Mtumodzi  the 2015 trip which was estimated to have costed taxpayers’ money worth $950,000, can now properly be managed by building school blocks or buy medicine and equipment or buy maize to fight hunger than sponsoring a shopping spree of party zealots in New York in the name of UN General Assembly.